Explorations

Future Paths of Phenomenology

1st OPHEN Summer Meeting

Repository | Series | Book | Chapter

196938

"I, Max" - communicating with an artificial agent

Ipke Wachsmuth

pp. 279-295

Abstract

With the advent of communicating machines in the form of embodied agents the question gets ever more interesting under which circumstances such systems could be attributed some sort of consciousness and self-identity. We are likely to ascribe to an agent with human appearance and conducting reasonable natural language dialog that it has desires, goals, and intentions. Taking the example of "Max", a humanoid agent embodied in virtual reality, this contribution examines under which circumstances an artificial agent could be said to have intentional states and perceive others as intentional agents. We will link our examination to the question of how such a system could have selfawareness and how this is grounded in its (virtual) physis and its social context. We shall discuss how Max could be equipped with the capacity to differentiate between his own and a partner's mental states and under which conditions Max could reasonably speak of himself as "I".

Publication details

Published in:

Wachsmuth Ipke, Knoblich Günther (2008) Modeling communication with robots and virtual humans: second ZIF research group international workshop on embodied communication in humans and machines, bielefeld, Germany, april 5-8, 2006, revised selected papers. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 279-295

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-79037-2_15

Full citation:

Wachsmuth Ipke (2008) „"I, Max" - communicating with an artificial agent“, In: I. Wachsmuth & G. Knoblich (eds.), Modeling communication with robots and virtual humans, Dordrecht, Springer, 279–295.